Last Wednesday a local internet site was warning us about high winds in the area . . . high wind advisory, 40 mile an hour winds expected, etc., etc.

“Whatever,” I thought, “Anchorage gets much stronger winds than that a dozen times a year. No big deal.”

Right.

I spent half of Wednesday night listening to the trees pound the house and windows and the other half of the night sleeping on G’s bottom bunk because I was quite certain our bedroom windows were going to come sailing into our bedroom in a thousand pieces.

At about 2:30 a.m. I discovered the power was out.

Somewhere in all of this I figured out that 40 miles per hour was a serious underestimation . . . or positive thinking.

The next morning I woke up and went downstairs to let the dogs out and found this . . .

The doors open out. The dogs had to hang out with their legs crossed while I figured out how to let them out of the house. The other door had a Ficus tree in front of it, too.

When I looked out the front window I saw this . . .

Half of the neighbors were milling around in their pajamas inspecting the damage.

And there was a bit . . . this tree had a power line in the midst of it.

We lost this big in ground Ficus tree . . . and our backyard privacy right along with it.

One of the pots containing a smaller Ficus tree didn’t make it.

But being good Alaskans we whipped out the duct tape and fixed it right up . . . looks so purty now . . .

The night we had wasn’t nearly as exciting as our neighbor down the block. See that wound in the tree – the one on the underside of the branch right there at the corner of her house? That is where a branch broke off of her Sycamore tree. That window, by the way, is right above her bed, which is where she was sitting watching TV when the branch broke.

This is the branch. It is difficult to appreciate the size and scope of the branch that broke. Just know that you can’t see the top half of it because it is in the neighbor’s yard. Part of it to the left and part of it to the right.

Here is the view of the top break site from her back porch. The bottom break site is on the backside of the branch to the left by the leaves.

This is the view of the neighbor’s yard across the street from our house.

Of course this whole event gave Chris an excuse to buy a new tool.

I find it rather ironic that we spent 11 years in Alaska without a good chainsaw and then within six months of moving to California we are now the proud owners of one.

Anyway, we spent a few days camping in the house . . . grateful for our heavy duty sleeping bags because it was in the 30’s at night and when half the house you live in was built a zillion years ago the lack of insulation is evident . . . grateful that the neighbors do not have a tankless water heater and let us shower at their place when we couldn’t take it anymore . . . grateful we had a really nice camping lantern and kid beads and card games . . . grateful for a sixty year old gas stove that has not one single electric part . . . and grateful we were here without power for three days instead of in Alaska.

And then . . . late Saturday night and into Sunday morning we gratefully watched a whole bunch of linemen and three bucket trucks in our front yard and on our street . . . making repairs to the five damaged lines and poles on our tiny little block.

Hallelujah!

Really, really appreciating hot water,
D

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